Socialists Are Key Leaders of the Anti-Trump Opposition
The Democrats have failed to mount a serious response to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. Their fecklessness has left the door open for democratic socialists like Zohran Mamdani to position themselves as the real opposition to Trump.
Zohran Mamdani is offering a clear analysis of the party’s problems and providing a model of how to win working-class voters back from the Right. (Selcuk Acar / Anadolu via Getty Images)
Who are the principal leaders of the opposition to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism? It certainly doesn’t feel like the Democratic Party establishment these days. Watching Zohran Mamdani run for New York City mayor, it increasingly feels like the opposition’s leaders are the Left.
Mamdani held a rally with 13,000 supporters at Forest Hills Stadium, joined by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Sen. Bernie Sanders. In their speeches to the crowd, Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and Mamdani argued that a vigorous defense of civil liberties and an aggressive economic populism are the antidote to Trump’s authoritarianism.
Nearly two weeks earlier, Mamdani held another mass rally in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. There he was introduced by New York attorney general Letitia James — her first public appearance since a federal indictment ordered by Trump, in clear retaliation for her past investigations into the president.
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